


The Truths We Choose to Believe

by chucksauce



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Pining, minor teensy spoilers for his route, mostly just angst though, seven being the angsty tsun-tsun we all know him to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 11:34:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12605688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chucksauce/pseuds/chucksauce
Summary: He's a hacker for an intelligence agency, and she's in an apartment with a bomb. There are things more important than crushes, right? MC can't believe he's so different in person than online, and Seven can't believe he deserves any happiness at all.





	The Truths We Choose to Believe

**Author's Note:**

> HEY FRIENDS HERE HAVE SOME ANGSTY PINING
> 
> So I know a lot of you have followed me for a long while for Johnlock and Stucky stuff... I haven't abandoned them! I've been bamboozled lately by a game called Mystic Messenger. It's free to play and will ruin your life, 707/10 do recommend.
> 
>   ~~Speaking of 707 I am highkey in love with him~~
> 
> Anyway, if you're not familiar with Mystic Messenger, or otome (dating sim) games in general, the female character here is purposefully not named, because this is the nameable character the player plays as. A lot of times in this fandom, she gets referred to as MC (Main Character), or the fic is in second person. I didn't want to do either of those things, and just left her neutrally at 'she.'

  


Seven isn't quite sure what his face is doing when she opens the door of Rika's apartment to him. He struggles to catch his breath while trying to make it look like he hadn’t sprinted from his car to the building, from door to elevator to door. He glances at her and then back to the floor, brusquely shouldering his way past her as soon as the door is open wide enough.

Oh, God, she’s cuter than her profile pictures from Fakebook. His heart slams in his chest, and not from the running.

* * *

She frowns. That… wasn’t the warmest greeting. Then again, this is a stressful situation. It would be hard for anyone to be in good spirits when they are about to defuse a bomb.

Impertinently, she realises that his hair is brighter orange-copper than it looks in the few photos he’s dropped into the messenger. Somehow the photos also failed to translate how slight his frame is; he’s skinny enough it borders on unhealthy. She can tell that, even underneath the baggy hoodie jacket and clothes. It’s in his sharp jaw, the pronounced knobs at his wrists and collarbones. The one thing that doesn’t entirely surprise her is the faint, acrid tang of sweat that clings to him as he passes. He’s spent how many days now, ignoring sleep to chase this hacker around the RFA’s internal framework? She doubts that showering had been high on the priority list, but she doesn’t mind.

Is that what comes from a life behind a computer, protecting the RFA, who have no idea how hard he works? Does it come from a life of working for an intelligence agency that never relents?

She ignores the pang that lodges in her chest, focuses instead on how glad she is that he’s come, despite how completely surreal this entire situation has become.

“Seven--!”

* * *

He gives no response, no acknowledgement that she’s even spoken, just goes to Rika’s desk and starts clearing off space for his laptop and what other portable equipment he could smuggle out of the bunker. Maybe if he ignores her, this will be easier. Maybe he’ll be able to get past this stupid crush and go back to being his usual self, not this foolish person who thinks that tempting fate won’t certainly end in disaster.

Since she first appeared in the chat, since the first time he called her, he’s thought about nothing but the way she sounds when he makes her laugh. It’s what led him to all the ridiculousness, even more than usual. It’s what made him call that night he’d woken with nightmares from his childhood--he’d changed it to a story about a mother cat, but still. It was her voice that drove the memories away.

He has to get over this. He’s an idiot, and he knows it. Getting involved will mean she’s in danger, even more than she already is.

Eventually he just  mutters an annoyed, “Don’t just stand there looking at me. Shut the door, keep yourself busy.”

* * *

This isn’t the way she’d expected their first time meeting to go at all. The Seven that played around with her on the messenger isn’t here. She can’t help but wonder if that had been a ruse; how much was hidden behind a screen?

She puts the thought away; he’d been playful then, yes, but now there is a bomb to deal with. His seriousness means her safety, but it also means the safety of who knows how many innocent people in that apartment building, all completely unaware that a bomb is tucked away somewhere on the fourteenth floor, being switched off and on by an unseen hand. Seven’s behavior makes sense.

Still it hurts.

“I’m glad you’ve come,” she murmurs, and moves toward him. The natural inclination to touch his shoulder, to catch his attention purposefully, is aborted at the last moment; something about him radiates _DO NOT TOUCH_ in glowing orange neon, so instead she heads for the kitchenette, intent on making something, a beverage or _something_ to offer him. It’s about the only way she can think to be useful right now. “Thank you, Seven. I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

* * *

Even now, when he’s being blatantly rude, she’s still so sweet. It’s not just politeness, he can tell. It’s what he’s trained for. She’s moved to the refrigerator, but he can feel her eyes on his back, on his neck, boring straight into the back of his skull. He tries not to slope his shoulders. He can’t reveal the guilt. He’s been trained too well for that. Still, he can’t bear her scrutiny. He can’t keep up the facade for long, he knows. He’ll just have to do his best, denying her in fits and starts until the armor is airtight.

“Stop staring at me.” He scowls. “Just pretend I’m not here.”

The way he says it isn’t a polite request, the kind that’s given when one worries they might be intruding. No, this is the demand of someone who obviously would rather chew their own foot off than ask for help getting out of a bear trap.

* * *

“I--um. Okay.” She frowns and ignores the harshness in his voice. This isn’t what she’d hoped for at all. The Seven she knows from chats, from texts and phonecalls--the one she’d begun unabashedly looking forward to talking with anytime she picked up her phone--is completely gone.

Rather than stay in the front room, getting her feelings trampled on like a crestfallen little girl with her first crush, she chooses to take him at face value. She nods once to his back, which is still turned to her. She shuts the fridge and escapes to the bedroom she’s become familiar with over the last several days. Alone, she stares at her phone and fights the urge to text him. He’d been the one giving her enough sanity to weather this madness, and now she didn’t even have that.

Her phone pings. Someone else is in the chat room. She thumbs open her phone; talking to any of them is better than being alone right now.

* * *

In the front room, Seven winces when he hears her door click shut. He feels like scum, like the dirty and broken thing he is, undeserving of this person who’d twisted his brain and occupied his thoughts these last few days.

Every time he talks to her, he forgets what it means to be Agent 707, defender of justice and all that. He forgets that he isn’t allowed to have good things. He forgets that he doesn’t deserve happiness.

And so he closes his eyes, breathes in deep and tries his best to focus on saving their lives rather than the way her frame had shrunk back when he pushed past her. He tells himself that the way her voice had gone small when she said his name means nothing at all. He tells himself that the way she makes him feel is a fleeting and false thing.

He knows that all these things he’s telling himself are lies. The only truth he’s certain of is that he’s an idiot, a coward who should be completely ashamed of putting her in this situation to begin with. He knows it’s better to lie to himself and to her than keep up this illusion that he’s some happy-go-lucky wunderkind who could someday be with her. She’s safer this way, and that’s the only thing he is allowed to want.

**Author's Note:**

> Lol I'm honestly REALLY curious if any of my Johnlock Fam or Stucky Fam have read this... let me know below if you did, and what you think!


End file.
